“Just 12 days after Matthew Aucoin was announced as the curator of the San Diego Symphony’s annual January festival, he was named as a recipient of the 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship,” writes George Varga in Sunday’s (1/6) San Diego Union Tribune. “ ‘Hearing the Future’s’ two-dozen-plus events … include collaborations with … the Playwrights Project, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Athenaeum Jazz, noted choreographers Jean Isaacs and John Malashock, Fresh Sound and Art of Élan, among others.… Said Aucoin, ‘What this festival is really all about is bringing together innovators of the past with innovators who are with us—in the flesh—today, and finding the links between them.’ One especially intriguing example will be [chamber opera] ‘He Pūtōrino Mākutu (a magic flute): a taonga pūoro puppet opera,’ … by … Celeste Oram [and] inspired by both the Polynesian Maori music of New Zealand and Mozart’s beloved 1791 opera ‘The Magic Flute.’ … ‘Were You There?’ [a music theater piece] directed by Zack Winokur … features vocal sensation Davóne Tines. He will use the words and melodies of African-American spirituals, Walt Whitman’s poetry and other sources in a contemplative work about lives lost to racial injustice.”
Posted January 8, 2019
